12–23 Jul 2021
Online
Europe/Berlin timezone

TauRunner: A Monte Carlo for Very-High-Energy Tau Neutrino Propagation

14 Jul 2021, 18:00
1h 30m
05

05

Talk NU | Neutrinos & Muons Discussion

Speaker

Oswaldo Vazquez (Harvard University)

Description

Very-High-Energy (VHE) neutrinos are expected to be produced by cosmic-ray interactions with the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). In these photo-hadronic interactions, muon- and electron-neutrinos are produced. As these neutrinos traverse the cosmic void, they morph from one flavor to another, yielding, in the standard scenario, a democratic flavor composition at their arrival on Earth. This so-called cosmogenic flux of VHE neutrinos is a target of the next generation neutrino observatories: IceCube-Gen2, TAMBO, RNO, GRAND, POEMMA, and CHANT. In a recent publication, a novel detection strategy for these neutrinos has been put forward. This new technique relies on the observation of Earth-throughgoing tau-neutrinos at PeV energies. By measuring the flux at this energy, we can indirectly observe the flux at EeV energies since these two are related by the cascading down of the neutrinos. However, such a link demands an accurate simulation of the VHE tau neutrino transport. TauRunner is a Python Monte Carlo (MC) package specialized in EeV tau neutrino transport with the limitation of not accounting for secondary flavors produced in some tau decay channels. In this contribution, I will present the newest version of this MC, which now incorporates all the neutrino flavors in the propagation, and discuss its implication for EeV neutrino searches.

Subcategory Experimental Methods & Instrumentation
Collaboration IceCube

Primary authors

Oswaldo Vazquez (Harvard University) Ibrahim Safa (University of Wisconsin-Madison) Jeffrey Lazar (University of Wisconsin-Madison) Alex Pizzuto (University of Wisconsin-Madison) Carlos Arguelles (Harvard University) Ali Kheirandish (The Pennsylvania State University) Justin Vandenbroucke (University of Wisconsin-Madison)

Presentation materials